10 Terrifying Horror Movies Inspired By H.P. Lovecraft

Elder gods, creepy cultists, fish folk, and a whole lot of eerie, empty New England ghost towns...

From Beyond
Empire Pictures

A legend in the world of horror fiction, HP Lovecraft’s tales of inescapable cosmic horror are some of the most influential stories in the history of the genre. Alongside his contemporaries Robert Chambers and William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft’s work provided the blueprint for much of what modern horror still mines its screams from—themes of crushing darkness, unseen elder gods and indescribable terrors, and unreliable narrators whose perceptions has been permanently misshapen by the many monstrous things they’ve encountered.

However, as influential as Lovecraft has been on authors as popular as Stephen King and Hellraiser scribe Clive Barker, the writer’s work has proven infamously difficult to realize on film. It’s largely down to how much his work relies on characters encountering monstrosities so horrific they defy all logic and explanation, things so strange they drive people mad at the sight of them—which is a challenge for any director to put onscreen.

Despite this evident impediment, over the decades some seriously impressive cinematic efforts have been inspired by Lovecraft’s work, as evidenced in this list of 10 chilling horrors inspired by, and in some cases directly adapted from, HP Lovecraft.

10. In The Mouth Of Madness

From Beyond
New Line Cinema

The final and strangest instalment in John Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy after body-hopping sci-fi horror The Thing and vampire chiller Prince of Darkness, 1990’s meta-horror In the Mouth of Madness is also the flick from the Halloween director which owed the most obvious debt to Lovecraft’s imaginings throughout his lengthy filmography.

Following a man driven to madness (or… is he?) as he searches a remote small town for a missing horror author whose books appear to be coming to life, In the Mouth of Madness features a mysterious, perhaps inhuman cult, a seaside town where everything is all sorts of wrong, and reality bending shenanigans attributed to some toothy, shapeless dark gods who are barely glimpsed onscreen.

Lovecraft could have sued, if he weren’t long dead already (or… is he?).

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Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.